**Cadillac User Experience (CUE)** Discussion, Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iPod? in Item Specific Cadillac Discussion; Try formatting the hard disk as FAT or FAT32....

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

The CUE team was great about responding...

The system supports any device that mounts as a USB mass storage device - this would include USB sticks, sd cards, and other devices. I am not sure many external hard drives mount that way - but there may be some. Please keep in mind that your CUE system is optimized for up to two devices and 10,000 songs total. This implies that system performance can start to degrade beyond this point - very similar to other devices on the market.

The system is currently USB 2 as USB 3 was being introduced and developed concurrently. Of course USB 3 devices are usually backwards compatible but the system wouldn't be able to operate the device as USB 3 speeds. Also, the CUE system is a bit unique that it does support 1.0 amp of USB charging (it is a powered USB hub) - great for iPads and other tablets so you can charge while on the road.

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

Further notes regarding my testing. My car at times would continue playing the song however I would not be able to change songs or do anything until several minutes of it being unresponsive but continuing to play whatever song it is playing. Regarding the above 10, 000 song optimization 160gb is roughly 27, 000 song woth an average song being 6mb.

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

Rippy,

It appeared to work fine initially, however intermittently it would stop functioning properly like noted above. Song continuing to play however cannot forward to next song or browse songs. Also last night I could not properly browse through all of the artists when in that search view. If this system is only configured to handle 10K songs that explains it, however it does not make much sense to program it to only be able to shuffle through 10K songs.

Needless to say I have removed the large HDD from my car and will not replace it until this limitation is resolved.

Also note where I had limited success while others had complete failure, I just placed MP3 files on the disk. These other users placed their entire itunes library on the disk which contains tons of different files which this system may have had issues with scanning - though one of the CUE engineer would have to speak on that more as I do not have the tools nor can I view the logs of what is going on on this system when it is scanning files.

What do you mean model #? The specific HDD?
I bought this one from target for testing:

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

CDN and Paletz, I seriously doubt the USB in our cars is USB3. No need for it really, to have what USB3 calls "SuperSpeed" to simply transfer music from a drive to play - that kind of throughput isn't necessary. Could be wrong but I suspect the rest of the CUE interface bus isn't fast enough and doesn't need to be. It would be like insisting on wifi/n protocol and then connecting with a wifi/b device.

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

Originally Posted by drsketch

Rippy,

It appeared to work fine initially, however intermittently it would stop functioning properly like noted above. Song continuing to play however cannot forward to next song or browse songs. Also last night I could not properly browse through all of the artists when in that search view. If this system is only configured to handle 10K songs that explains it, however it does not make much sense to program it to only be able to shuffle through 10K songs.

Needless to say I have removed the large HDD from my car and will not replace it until this limitation is resolved.

Also note where I had limited success while others had complete failure, I just placed MP3 files on the disk. These other users placed their entire itunes library on the disk which contains tons of different files which this system may have had issues with scanning - though one of the CUE engineer would have to speak on that more as I do not have the tools nor can I view the logs of what is going on on this system when it is scanning files.

What do you mean model #? The specific HDD?
I bought this one from target for testing:

I was also able to connect a portable HDD to the USB port in the center stack behind the display. Not a brand name device or anything, just an old 250gb 2.5" drive from an old notebook that I dropped into a generic usb-sata housing for USB use. It contained my entire music collection (artist/album1, album2, etc) and several large playlists, about 115gb total. A few seconds after plugging it in, it picked a song and began playing, so using a HDD drive is indeed possible. So, I shut the car down and left it in there. The LED was still blinking so my assumption is it was indexing even while the car is off?

Hours later I came back out to test and it was still indexing, so clearly either the large volume of folders and files was an issue, or HDDs are just slow to index given their size.

Pulled that out and am in the process of moving my "core" music to a 64gb Transcend 10x SD card. Tedious to tag all of that with MP3Tag, but I like seeing album covers and correct titles on the screen. The SD card is formatted NTFS. When I plugged it in this morning with about 6500 MP3 songs in artist/album tree format, 15 playlists with 100 MP3s each, and another single playlist with 1000 songs (all playlists in M3U format) (total storage used on the card is about 58gb), it immediately started playing a song but the volume began to increase to maximum on it's own. Very weird, and I fear it's the beginning of CUE issues for me like I've been seeing others post about here. I'll update the forum in a day or two when tagging is done and it's had time to index completely, and see how it acts.

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

Ronbo, will do. How did you format the SD card? I can easily stream audiobooks from my HTC1 over BT, so you shouldn't be having problems either. Did your contacts sync shortly after you paired the phone? Are they talking? How are you trying to stream to CUE with your Android?

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

I believe I formatted the card in ExFat.

Not certain. There are instructions posted somewhere in this forum exactly what format to use.

My intent was not to stream the content from the Android to Cue. I wanted a direct connection, as if I was connecting an iPhone or iPod to the system.

That led to problems. First, CUE would not recognize the Android as a music device. I had to actually root the phone so that the external card within the phone (where my music is stored) would be recognized as an external device.

Even after all that done, CUE would recognize the external card but would not play the music.

(By the way, I believe I use iSyncr to move music files from my Mac to the Android).

What I want to do is similar to what it seems you are trying to do...

Put my music on the 64GB SD card. Plug that card into the SD slot within the armrest console and hope CUE recognizes it.

Tried it -- did not work -- but perhaps I did something wrong.

....but then again, CUE has absolutely been the most frustrating system I have ever worked with. I am a tech guy who usually can figure these things out, but to date, I haven't been able to get the SD card to work.

....which is why I am looking forward to reading about your experiments and results.

Re: Can CUE play iTunes music (files) from a hard drive in the same way it does an iP

Hmmm. I see what you're trying to do, use your android device as a USB drive, like when you plug it into your PC and open the device as a drive. Not sure that's going to work, and (just me) IMHO, it's easier to drop $40 on a card, load it with what you want, and leave it there so you don't depend on plugging your phone in every you want music... I think I'm going to reach out to the CUE care team and see if they have a recommended formatting and folder structure for the SD card and USB stick to optimize playback, etc.

I think this afternoon I'll strip most of the content off the SD card, leaving only a few music folders, and a single big playlist with the .m3u playlist file in the folder and see what happens, as it shouldn't take long to index fewer items. Ideally, I'd like to know how CUE is supposed to recognize podcasts too - they're all mp3 files, so how does it know it's not simply another song?

You might start with formatting your SD card as NTFS, that worked for me.